Eat, Pray, Love
by randomizer747
Summary: three snapshots of the Kalinda/Alicia relationship


**Eat, Pray, Love**

_Alicia often thinks to herself that getting to know Kalinda is like gentling a wild animal—it's all about slow movements and not pushing. So when Kalinda presents her with something as simple as a change of address card, Alicia knows what it means. Unexpectedly, the sudden rush of affection that she feels at the gesture of trust translates into Owen-style teasing. _

"_I feel like we've grown closer together."_

_Kalinda tries to snatch the card from her. "Okay, give it back."_

"_Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is going into my copy of _Eat, Pray, Love_."_

_Alicia is pleased when Kalinda rewards her with one of those rare half-smiles. Both of them know that there is no copy of _Eat, Pray, Love_. Neither would ever think of reading a cheesy self-discovery memoir. It's one of the things that they have in common, that draws them to one another._

**eat**

They have Chinese takeout that night, sitting and eating dinner in a Lockhart Gardner conference room, talking about the Lemond Bishop divorce case. Kalinda lets Alicia have the last steamed dumpling and offers her a beer. Alicia shakes her head. "I'm trying to drink less."

"Since when?"

"My daughter . . . she thinks I drink too much."

"You know what your problem is?"

"I don't drink _enough_?"

"You didn't get your tubes tied."

Alicia is shocked for an instant, then bursts into laughter. Kalinda laughs too, as if pleased at the response. Alicia loves the dark slyness of Kalinda, loves how she can say and do things that nobody else can say or do. After years of performing exactly as the world expected of her, Alicia is more than ready for a little of Kalinda's carefree way of shucking off the responsibilities that bind normal people into the chains of society. (_One night, no repercussions._ _Anything you want to be you, is you, Kalinda had said to her last year when they went out to celebrate her promotion over Cary._ _No, all that definitely wasn't her, as she had told Kalinda. But still, Alicia enjoys thinking that it could be, even more than she wants to admit.)_

When Kalinda finally nudges her grand jury subpoena over and asks Alicia to be her lawyer for the hearing on Wednesday, Alicia is touched. The chasm between what she knows about Kalinda and how much she enjoys _being_ with Kalinda is so vast that it embarrasses her sometimes. She wants to serve Kalinda well professionally, of course. But she also hopes (selfishly, not professionally at all) that their grand jury strategy sessions might be a good excuse for Kalinda to open up just a little bit more.

Days later, after Kalinda cleverly manipulates the grand jury questions to avoid an all-but-certain indictment, she and Alicia have a drink at their usual bar to celebrate.

"Cary was in on it, wasn't he?" Alicia asks. "He knew what to ask you."

Kalinda shrugs, eating a peanut. "Cary's a great guy."

"Ooh, listen to you. You and Cary, sitting in a tree . . ." Alicia cannot believe how much she sounds like Owen. Only Kalinda seems to bring out this lightness in her. Kalinda watches, amused.

"Just shoring up friends."

"What do you mean?" asks Alicia sharply, looking at her. Kalinda says so little, compared to normal people, that anything she _does_ utter can be significant.

"For the end of days."

"Hmm," muses Alicia. Then, abruptly, because it's been on her mind, "I have to buy a big house."

"You _have_ to?"

"For appearances, I don't know." Alicia fiddles with a napkin and contemplates a peanut. "I have to stop life from just happening, don't I? I don't want to buy a house. I _like_ my apartment."

Kalinda nods. "Yeah, I like it too." Alicia thinks about that, the day Kalinda spent with her in the apartment, working on Carter Wright's death row appeal. They had an _almost_ sharing moment, sitting on Alicia's bed, drinking beer. _Almost_ is about as close as it ever gets with Kalinda.

Even so, Kalinda is really her only friend now, Alicia realizes suddenly. She's not sure what to call Will, exactly, but "friend" doesn't seem right. "I used to have so many friends. Where are they now?"

"Now you lost me."

"Back then, my old life, the big house. I had all of these—Mom friends. All talking about our weight." Alicia snorts.

"Yeah, I wish I knew you back then." Kalinda's tone might have been wistful.

Alicia shakes her head. "No, I was—different. We would have hated each other."

Kalinda gives her one of those inscrutable looks, a look that in anyone else would have seemed almost loving, but of course in Kalinda must be something completely different. And then it was gone.

Alicia sighs. "Life changes, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does."

"But we can change it back. We can do what we want."

Neither woman has any idea how often they will both recall this particular conversation, how quickly their world will implode, or how ironic everything they just said will soon seem. Right now, they just enjoy the feeling of sitting together in comfortable silence.

**pray**

_Don't, please, don't let it happen. Don't let it happen . . ._

Alicia Florrick has never felt so alone in the universe, praying for her child to the same God that her rational, linear mind discarded as improbable long ago, never looking back. Her thoughts flicker a single time to Kalinda, who once would have been the first person she could call to perform the extraordinary. Kalinda, who always knows what to do and where to go in any situation. But then the blind terror reasserts itself, shoving aside the familiar choking cold that any thought or sight of Kalinda always brings. And Alicia is alone again, waiting to find out what the world will soon be forced to reveal.

_I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son . . ._

The sight of Grace in the church on the other side of the city fills Kalinda with fury rather than relief. Its first target is Grace. Grace, who does not know enough to keep her cell phone charged. Grace, who gets into cars that take her to the worst sections of Chicago. Grace, who above all has the gift to _choose_ whether or not to cause Alicia pain, and still for some incomprehensible reason chooses pain.

(_She should have had her tubes tied_.)

Its next target is Jimmy Patrick, the ultra-cool baptizing hipster in his Urban Outfitters uniform. Kalinda enjoys ripping into him, enjoys the flicker of real fear in his eyes, enjoys how embarrassed Grace seems about it all. Threatening people is something that Kalinda has perfected over a lifetime of needing the skill, and she relies on it now like an old friend. It's one of the few solid things she has left in her life these days.

Its third target is the church. Kalinda hates places of worship, the very _idea_ of worship. She despises the lies, the complacent certainty that some empty ritual has the power to purify and banish the darkness. She hates the weakness of those who feel comforted there. Above all, she hates churches for allowing people to believe they have an escape route from what they have done in the past, and what they are almost certainly going to do again.

The final target, as always, is herself. It hits her most strongly on the ride back with Grace. What is she doing, driving with this child of the woman who loathes her? What is it within her that binds her to Alicia Florrick, no matter what Alicia does or how Alicia feels? But just outside of her fury, she hears Grace say something. When Kalinda glances over at the sound of the voice, she sees for an instant a spark of Alicia looking back at her. And all the anger just melts away, as if it had never been there at all. Kalinda knows what she is doing and why she is bound—she has always known. There is no point at all in trying to convince herself that what is true is actually not, or is something else entirely. Doing that would make her no better than those who believe that mere liquid and words have the power to turn a bad person into a good one.

**love**

There comes a night when life changes yet again. There are words unadorned and difficult and thick with tenderness. There are tears, and a hug that sears through Kalinda like an electric shock that she cannot stand and never wants to end. There is a beer (_it's a Lockhart-Gardner tradition, Alicia says: when you start over, you drink beer_), handed to Kalinda with the heart-tugging Alicia smile, warm and open and unguarded, a smile that Kalinda thought she would never see again. The cold, cleansing drink is the best thing that she has ever tasted. Sitting on that couch in Alicia's apartment, drinking beer, watching Alicia smile, are miracles in a world that has never before chosen to deliver miracles to Kalinda Sharma.

After the emotion, after the letting go, the intensity of the drowsiness that follows hits Kalinda with the force of a baseball bat. Had she been able to form coherent thoughts, she might have believed that Alicia had drugged her. The room starts to slide in and out of focus, and her eyelids droop despite her battle to keep her head erect.

"I should go," she murmurs, trying to will herself into an upright position.

Alicia puts a hand on her shoulder. "Stay. The kids are with Peter. There's no reason to leave."

There is every reason to leave. Kalinda knows that she does not deserve to be here, safe and warm on this couch. She needs to free herself, to protect Alicia's light from being snuffed by the darkness. But all language, all means of communication, seem to have vanished. However hard Kalinda fights, she feels herself unable to move, unable to command her tongue to form any words at all. A pillow materializes under her head, cool and soft. Then her boots are gone, and her jacket, and she is enveloped in a comforting, wooly afghan.

"How long has it been since you've had a decent night's sleep?"

Almost a year, Kalinda thinks but does not say. Since _You have a tell_. Since _I work here and you work here, but that's it. _Since the darkness that she tries to lock into herself, to prevent from swallowing whole the people under her protection, has become the only soul she knows.

She feels Alicia's lips brushing against her forehead, Alicia's hand stroking her cheek. And her whisper: _Kalinda, you are not a bad person_.

Baptized by love, Kalinda drifts off, the darkness finally fading to gray.


End file.
